The IRGC’s history of violence and aggression dates back decades.
In recent years, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a significant military branch of Iran, has increasingly come under global scrutiny for its destabilizing activities in the Middle East and beyond. Politicians, lawmakers, and international observers have been vocal in criticizing the West’s hesitation to label the IRGC as a primary contributor to regional war and chaos, calling this reluctance a political disgrace.
In a startling admission in 1991, Mohsen Rafiqdoust, the former Minister of the IRGC, publicly acknowledged the organization’s involvement in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed 400 American and French military and non-military personnel.
Rafiqdoust stated, “Those explosive materials that were combined with that ideology sent 400 officers, non-commissioned officers, and soldiers to hell at the Marines barracks. Both the TNT was Iranian and its ideology had come from Iran,” as reported by the Resalat newspaper on July 20, 1991.
This aggressive rhetoric and stance have persisted to the present day. On November 8, the state-run Asr-e-Iran website quoted Rafiqdoust saying, “In the region, we have hostages who, if there is a possibility of an attack against us, we can eliminate them within half an hour or an hour.” Following these remarks, Hossein Shariatmadari, a representative of regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei, attempted to downplay Rafiqdoust’s statements as misinterpreted military terms.
The Iranian regime’s approach to international relations appears increasingly anchored in the use of terrorism and hostage-taking as tools of state policy.
However, Rafiqdoust’s subsequent clarification, as reported by the Tabnak newspaper on November 10, only reiterated the menacing nature of his initial statement. This strategy, aimed at extorting the world community, has even been suggested as a revenue generation method for the Quds Force, an elite unit of the IRGC, and its proxy forces.
In a striking example of this strategy, on January 26, 2020, the Bahar News website quoted IRGC officer Hassan Abbasi proposing the kidnapping of Americans to counteract sanctions.
Hassan Abbasi,IRGC officer:“If you want the problem of sanctions to be resolved, every now and then, capture ten to twenty Americans and demand one billion dollars for each of them. If you receive one billion dollars per week, it will amount to $51 billion annually.”
Such statements and actions from high-ranking officials within the IRGC have brought international attention to the organization’s tactics. These revelations paint a concerning picture of a regime that is increasingly reliant on crime, hostage-taking, and terrorism to address its domestic and international challenges. The international community continues to grapple with the implications of these actions and the broader role of the IRGC in regional instability.
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